Slideshow: Top gardeners under 40

It’s perhaps not so surprising to find plenty of young people joining
community or guerrilla gardening sorties in cities and towns: it’s fun,
fashionable, social and instantly cheering. Doing it for a living, though,
just doesn’t seem to have the same appeal. Earlier this summer, the Royal
Horticultural Society published a report commissioned by leading
organisations in the gardening world, which paints a distinctly gloomy
picture. It found that more than 70% of businesses within the industry can’t
fill skilled vacancies.

Yet it’s not all desolation. Here we round up the hottest horticultural
talents under the age of 40 (with honourable mentions for some just past the
post) — in their hands, the future of gardening looks bright, creative and
altogether rosy.

Marie-Louise Agius, 35
A scion of the Exbury de Rothschilds, she dazzled the judges this year with
her first Chelsea show garden: co-designed with Michael Balston, it won a